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State of Washington

Bog Boots & Oysters – An Autumn getaway to the Long Beach Peninsula

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October 31, 2020

I’ve always wanted to see the cranberry harvest on the Washington Coast. So, when it looked like the weather gods would smile for a few days on the usually rainy Long Beach Peninsula in the far southwest corner of the state, we decided to drive four hours from our home. In no hurry, we took secondary roads, more scenic than the freeway. They wind through logging country where we dodged the loaded trucks whipping down the road toward mills to add to the piles of logs (called cold decks around here) waiting to be turned into lumber.… Read more

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Akershus Fortress Oslo Oslo City Hall

OSLO – WAR AND REMBRANCE

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September 28, 2020

After experiencing the wild exuberance of the Vigeland Sculpture complex, the Oslo City Hall is a model of sobriety with its red-brick exterior and rational layout, entrance courtyard with fountain and carvings from Norse myths, and long central hall flanked by two towers. Instead of naked writhing people, the artwork is reflective of the Norwegian character based on foundation myths and history.

While there are oil paintings and ceramic plaques, such as these honoring women,

much of the artwork in the interior of the grand building is in the form of fresco, a medium I particularly like.… Read more

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art Norway Oslo Sculpture Travel Vigeland

OSLO – VIGELAND SCULPTURE PARK

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August 21, 2020

While I would never count the number of statues on display in any other museum I’ve visited, it’s hard not to count when describing the Norwegian sculptor Gustav Vigeland’s work on display in the 80-acre sculpture garden set in the lovely Frogner Park in Oslo. To sum up: the individual works total 220 bronze and granite human forms plus some strangely compelling wrought iron work. The entrance gates were the first to capture my eye.

Vigeland, was a well-known sculptor in Norway by 1924 when he began his monumental effort to depict the naked human form from childhood to old age in all its beauty and ugliness.… Read more

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Belguim Blankenberge Denmark Skagen

BEACH TOWNS

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July 7, 2020
 
 
Everyone loves a beach town in summer. Each town has a different personality, although all specialize in food, fun, sand, and sunburn. We enjoyed two wildly different experiences last summer, both very different from my hometown on the shores of Puget Sound north of Seattle.
 
 
The first was Skagen, strategically placed on the sandy tip of Denmark where the channels from the North Sea (Skagrrak) and the Kattegat, leading to the Baltic Sea, meet. It’s been a fishing and shipping town for some 600 years as the colorful fishing nets still attest.
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Uncategorized

A Passion for Purses and . . . . Kat Out of the Bag, . . . . . . . . . In Purse-Suit Mysteries: An American In Rome

on
June 6, 2020

A Passion for Purses and . . . . Kat Out of the Bag, . . . . . . . . . In Purse-Suit Mysteries: An American In Rome: Katherine : Beauty surrounds my trips to Rome, including on the runways of the fabulous shows of Italian fashions.  Kat Out of the Bag boo…

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Portugal Spain Train Travel

NIGHT TRAINS

on
May 19, 2020
A triptych of short stories about trains during the golden age of Eurail Passes, cheap travel, and no digital cameras.
It was Eastertime, the start of the European travel season, and the packed train from Paris to the French-Spanish border was hours behind schedule.
 
 
We missed our onward connection to Lisbon and ended up running to catch a local, the only train going in our direction until the following day. There was no time to buy provisions but we assumed that there would be a dining car.
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goats Norway sardines Stavanger

STAVANGER: Chocolate-dipped Goats and Sardines

on
March 12, 2020

One of the major reasons to visit Norway is to see the magnificent fjords, sea arms that stretch far into the landscape. One of the most spectacular is Lysefjorden, not far from Stravanger, a city between Bergen and Oslo, the capital. The 26-mile long fjord with waters 1600 feet deep is hemmed in by cliffs rising to 3000 feet. It’s no wonder that Victor Hugo used it as a setting in his 1886 novel, Toilers of the Sea, where he wrote that “Lyse-Fjord is the most terrible of all the gut rocks of the ocean.”  
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Bergen Fantoft Stave Church Grieg Norway

BERGEN the Beautiful

on
January 19, 2020

Bergen, Norway, has a reputation for rain. Lots of rain: 83 inches over 230 days each year. But the weather gods smiled when were there. Located on the southerly portion of Norway’s fiord-fringed coast, the city originally gained prominence as part of the Hanseatic League, a commercial and defensive confederation of merchant guilds and market towns from the late 1100s until the mid-1600s. Now it’s a busy and beautiful university city.

The old traders’ warehouses divided by narrow alleys line the waterfront.
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Faroe Islands North Sea Saksun Torshavn Travel

DRAGON SKIN – The Faroe Islands

on
November 4, 2019

DRAGON SKIN
The wrinkled sea shining in the damp silvery dawn made me think of dragons’ skin and old Norse gods as the ship glided slowly into the harbor at Torshavn. The sun pierced dark clouds to illuminate buildings and harbor.
I imagined the characters from Norse myths: Grendel, Beowulf, Thor, Odin, and all the rest were hiding somewhere in the hills overlooking the harbor.
Torshavn is the capital of the Faroe Islands, a self-governing country within the Kingdom of Denmark (which also includes Greenland).
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England Salisbury Wells

SALISBURY AND WELLS: The Thin Space

on
September 7, 2019

Sometimes a respite from all the jangles of our livesthe clicking, beeping, dinging, and talking headsis necessary to preserve our sanity. Sometimes when we don’t know who to believe or even why, it’s a balm to mentally return to a time when certainty ruled people’s lives. A time when few expected a change in their status; when having a “brand” was not an objective. A medieval world most of us would find hard and confining but tempered by a close relationship with the divine and a secure place in the social order.
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Coins in the Fountain
Available on Amazon. Kirkus Reviews says “You don’tneed Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck to enjoy this delightful Roman Holiday…Armchair-travel books are rarely as good as this one”
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Available on Amazon. Kirkus Reviews says “You don’tneed Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck to enjoy this delightful Roman Holiday…Armchair-travel books are rarely as good as this one”

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